Tinubu must be decisive in dealing with insecurity – Agbaje

President-elect Bola Tinubu must adopt deliberate strategies to deal with the issue of insecurity that has claimed about 350,000 between 2009 and 2020, in Nigeria.

The United Nations Develop Programme (UNDP) in 2020 reported that insecurity directly led to the death of 35,000 people in three states in the region, while an estimated 314,000 people died “from indirect causes” in the entire northeast region.

But speaking at an interactive session with journalists in Abuja on Wednesday, Opeyemi Agbaje, the CEO of RTC Advisory Services, a strategy and business advisory firm, blamed the level of insecurity in Nigeria on large-scale poverty, among other socio-economic malaise

Agbaje, speaking at the event organised by the First City Monument Bank (FCMB) plc, stated that the government mismanaged the nation’s economy in the past eight years

Agbaje said that President Muhammadu Buhari did not demonstrate enough strong will to deal with security challenges in Nigeria.

According to him, the president did not make himself clear about how he wanted to deal with insecurity. I think that the most important thing has to do with developing the political will to tackle insecurity.

“If the president makes himself clear and is decisive about tackling the challenges, he will succeed. I don’t think that the Nigerian military is that incompetent. There have been mixed signals; you can’t afford to have mixed signals if you must succeed in addressing insecurity in a complex country like Nigeria”

Read also: GSK grows investment income by 232%, highest in four years

You need to start empowering people; you have to invest in education. We can’t wait until the day will settle the issue of insecurity before you start to empower people.

So, the incoming administration must have a strong political will to drive security.
The most important factor is the political will and the decisiveness by the incoming government to deal with security”

“There must also be investment in education, health, human capital development, which will help reduce poverty, social inequality and boost the quality of life of the Nigerian people”

On Tinubu’s cabinet, Agbaje expressed confidence that the incoming administration has the capacity not only to attract high-quality cabinet ministers but also the will to appoint “very competent hands” given the benefits of past experience as a former governor.

Tinubu will put competent people in charge of offices. They have a big diverse team that I am aware of, many of who will form part of the incoming government.